Great week for David, he played really well for the most part in his matches during the week. Soderling started serving poorly although off the ground he looked pretty good and both of them were exchanging fierce baseline rallies with very good depth. Nalbandian played pretty much flawlessly up to set and 4-2, dealing with Soderling's pace of shot well and being able to outmanouevre Soderling well as if he could hit it pretty much wherever he wanted to. And like he was doing throughout the week, he was able to follow it into the net to make the most of his well struck groundstrokes. For much of the first set, David's serve was on fire, I remember two or three games in a row of mostly unreturnables.

As LeChuck said, then a few errors started to creep in and he started to look a lot more average. It was always likely that Soderling was going to pick up the quality of his serving and just slightly worse depth on Nalbandian's shots allowed Soderling to dictate more. Soderling also got fired up and that helped him play with more energy. In the third set, David started to play more solidly, more in his comfort zone, kind of like what we're used to seeing from him. Soderling gave him a few errors and in that game where he got the initial break, he stepped it up whenever they got into a rally. Then as soon as he broke serve, Soderling's standard of play deteriorated badly.

Even though he comes into Madrid with good form, the small amount of time to adjust to the altitude and playing conditions in Madrid is a bit worrying especially given that he faces Berdych. Then again, even if it wasn't for the lack of time to adjust, it would be a tough match anyway. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.